Features

Legal Update: Care – A protected characteristic?

Ellen Broome, managing director of CoramBAAF, explains how making care a protected characteristic would place a duty on organisations to take the needs of care-experienced people into account.
Cambridge City Council is one of 55 local authorities that voted to make care experience a protected characteristic. Picture: Alexey Fedorenko/Adobe Stock
Cambridge City Council is one of 55 local authorities that voted to make care experience a protected characteristic. Picture: Alexey Fedorenko/Adobe Stock

In July, the children’s commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, opened a consultation on whether care experience should be a “protected characteristic” under the Equality Act 2010. This follows news that 55 local authorities so far have voted to make care experience a protected characteristic.

The momentum for change has emerged out of the growing recognition that care leavers face poorer outcomes in physical and mental health, education, employment and housing, as well as an increased risk of premature death and contact with the criminal justice system. Crucially, many care-experienced people themselves say that discrimination has contributed to negative outcomes in their lives.

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